Click Start, then Schlog Off

I’m so glad we had this time together
Just to have a laugh and sing a song
Seems we just got started and before you know it
Comes the time we have to say “So long.”

– Carol Burnett

A new month, a new calendar quarter, a new chapter in the life of Schrag, the end of SCHRAG as we know it.

When I started my little enterprise just over seven years ago, I had just two goals: To earn enough money to support my lower-upper-middle-class lifestyle, and to be proud of the work I do. It was important for me to say, at the end of the day, that I was performing a valuable service, delivering quality solutions, and making a meaningful difference in other people’s lives.

Well, that was fun while it lasted. But as I was walking down this road of life, I came to this street sign:

It occurred to me that job satisfaction is nice and all, but at the end of the day it doesn’t get you that country club membership, the time share in Bermuda, the Porsche in the garage that only gets used on summer weekends, and all the other ways of saying “Look at me, America — I’m better than you are!” No, that requires some serious moolah. So I started looking around for ways to get some.

I approached this challenge in the spirit of bank robber Willie “That’s Where the Money Is” Sutton. I needed to find a place that was rolling in dough and that wouldn’t mind or maybe wouldn’t even notice if I siphoned off a bit for myself. And it turns out I happen to be somewhat familiar such an outfit: Microsoft. Last year they had gross revenues of $44 billion. Gotta be some loose change rattling around in the dryer there, right?

So I called up a good friend of mine there, Eric Ligman. I said “Eric, I think Redmond could use a guy like me. Is there anything I could do for you that would be worth about one one-thousandth of one percent of your gross revenues?” And he said, “David, what took you so long to call?”

Two hours and three e-mail exchanges with steveb@microsoft.com later, the deal was done. So I am now no longer speaking to you as President of SCHRAG Inc., but rather Vice President for Small Business Product Development and Marketing for Microsoft Corporation. I’ll be chairing a task force consisting of Kathleen Hogan, Rajesh Jha, Antoine Leblond, Richard McAniff, Michael Park, and Eduardo Rosini. Staffing the task force will be Eric Ligman, Cindy Bates, Frederic De Wulf, and several other key Microsoft managers.

Our charge will be to take the existing set of confusing and conflicting products, services, licensing requirements, and marketing messages that Microsoft is currently targeting to small businesses with 5 - 100 employees and to turn them into a unified framework that business owners, small business technology consultants, equipment manufacturers, and software distributors can understand and implement. My vision is to make deciding what Microsoft products and services to buy and how to pay for them about as complicated as doing a mail merge. And I want to see those Microsoft products and services molded to fit the real needs of real businesses, not some imaginary Contoso concoction.

I’m excited to have the opportunity to correct what I see as some of the biggest problems for Microsoft in the small business market, but mostly I’m excited by the prospect of making a lot more money and buying a lot more stuff.

I will almost certainly be starting a new blog in my new capacity, but unfortunately it probably won’t be quite entertaining as The Schlog that you’ve gotten to know over these past few months. So as I sign off, I leave you with one thought that I hope will capture the spirit of what SCHRAG Inc., The Schragazine, and The Schlog have all been about:

Happy April Fool’s Day!